Dansk Tableware -
The Original Minimalists
Dansk Tableware: More than any other company Dansk was responsible for the development of what we all now perceive as the Scandinavian Modern style. Has their mesmerizing minimalist reign ended?
In the 1960’s award winning Danish designer Jens Quistgaard teamed up with marketer Ted Nierenberg to develop a collection of tableware called which they called Dansk China.
Their first successful pattern was Fjord, discontinued in 1984.
The Dansk website proudly proclaims it is celebrating over 50 years of innovation.
Dansk tableware certainly was a true innovation and one that changed the look of peoples’ houses in the decades to follow.
The Dansk legacy has been sleek, cold minimalistic chic.
Television and radio ads were
proclaiming “Chuck out the Chintz”. I should hate the Dansk duo
really, but the way I see it, every dog has its day and sweet romance is
back with a vengeance, if you hadn’t already noticed. So I’ll forgive
them.
Do you agree with me? Visitors can make comments, or ask questions at the bottom of the page. Go here to see who said what and join in too.
The battle between classical and romantic has always been feather flying pillow fight, but I believe the sway has gone our way now for a good while to come. Let’s rescue romance and salvage the floral festival from the skip of modernism and smother the nothing lovers for a few decades.
Despite the word "Dansk" being the Danish word for "Danish" - Dansk is not actually a Danish company!
Ted Nierenberg was an American businessman who persuaded award winning designer Quistgaard's to design for his company. Nierenberg had seen Quistgaard's designs on display at the Copenhagen museum. He saw a fork, a spoon, and a knife and immediately had the vision for the new venture.
Many people have business visions, only true entrepreneurs can make them a reality. The fact that he went ahead and made an idea into reality is commendable – and quite rare actually.
Quistgaard was quite a find for Ted Nierenberg. Quistgaard continued as chief designer at Dansk for nearly 50 years, dying in 2008, and had designed literally hundreds of products for the Dansk factory. Today Dansk tableware is purchased by many of the top US retailers such as Marshall Field's, Bed Bath & Beyond, Carson Pirie Scott, Dillard's, Fortunoff and Macy’s. Dansk tableware products are permanently on show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian Institution and the Louvre, Paris.
This makes Dansk china replacements the dinnerware choice of the sophisticated set of look-at-me-now socialites. Their first logo was the duck family - hand-drawn by Quistgaard in 1954. The duck represented a unified ‘family’ of product lines and the 3 waves of water were the 3 canals of Copenhagen (even though the company wasn't Danish it was American).
Redefining the word "tableware," Dansk was the first company to offer the concept of a fully coordinated dinnerware product line. The company slogan reads “Life is hard enough - let Dansk make it easy”. In more recent collections Dansk have put floral and colored motifs into their collection (seee above graphic) - so even the great pioneers of minimalism are gaining some romance and frilly things back in their lives!
return from Dansk Tableware to homepage or alternatively back to China Manufacturers
